Profile: Monti Belot

Monti Belot was a participant or observer in the following events:

Terry Nichols and his brother James Nichols are charged by a Michigan federal court with conspiring to help suspected Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh build explosives at Terry Nichols’s farm in Michigan (see December 22 or 23, 1988). Judge Monti Belot rules that Terry Nichols will be held without bail, and will be transferred to Oklahoma City sometime after noon on May 5; the delay in the transfer gives Nichols’s public defender, Steven Gradert, time to file a possible appeal. (Gradert also alleges that when the FBI first interviewed Nichols—see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995—he may not have understood his rights under the law.) The complaint, filed in a federal court in Michigan, does not directly link either of the brothers to the Oklahoma bombing. It does accuse both brothers of building what the complaint calls “bottle bombs” and of experimenting with other explosives with McVeigh in 1992 and 1994 (see April 2, 1992 and After, November 1991 - Summer 1992, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, and February - July 1994). Until today, both the brothers were held, not as suspects, but as material witnesses (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995); the conspiracy charges are designed to keep them behind bars until investigators can find more solid links between them and the bombing plot. An affidavit accompanying the complaint says that, like McVeigh, both Nichols brothers blamed the government for the 1993 Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After); authorities have alleged that part of McVeigh’s motivation for the bombing was revenge for the 1993 debacle (see April 24, 1995). An initial version of the affidavit says a witness, Daniel Stomber of Evergreen Township, Michigan, had heard James Nichols “stating that judges and President Clinton should be killed, and that he blamed the FBI and the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] for killing the Branch Davidians in Waco.” A revised affidavit made public later deletes that information. James Nichols’s lawyer, Miriam Siefer, calls the information in the affidavit “quite stale.” The complaint itself says that James Nichols informed federal agents that his brother and McVeigh had been at his Michigan farm off and on since December 1991. James also told agents that his brother had obtained survival books that had information about bombs, and said he believed McVeigh knew how to build a bomb. The affidavit says James has admitted to building small bombs with McVeigh and his brother, but denied ever buying ammonium nitrate, one of the key ingredients in the Oklahoma City bomb. However, the affidavit says all three men were known to possess quantities of fertilizer and fuel oil, the same materials used in the Oklahoma City bomb, and says that Terry Nichols admitted to FBI investigators that he had bought at least 100 pounds of ammonium nitrate in the recent past. The affidavit says a witness told agents that all three men built other devices made of prescription vials, black powder, blasting caps, and safety fuses, which they detonated in empty fields of James Nichols’s 500 acres. Shrapnel was found in the fields, the affidavit says. Investigators found 28 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and a 55-gallon drum of fuel oil on James Nichols’s farm; both ingredients are common on many farms, but James Nichols has claimed to be an organic farmer and thusly would not ordinarily use such materials. The affidavit says that in December 1993, McVeigh used an alias to buy liquid nitro airplane fuel, which could be used with other chemicals to improvise explosives (see December 1993). The complaint and affidavit will be presented to a federal court in Wichita, Kansas, on April 26. James Nichols will be released a month later without bond; US District Judge Paul Borman will rule that the government failed to link him to the bombing (see May 22, 1995). [New York Times, 4/26/1995; Boston Globe, 4/26/1995; New York Times, 4/25/1996; Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 810-811]

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